Which games would you describe as "well written"?

The Secret World. That main questline…

Oh, this is just me. Hi thread! How’s it going. As i kick the dirt and whistle, hands in pocket with a carefree look of patient knowing.

What about games like Phoenix Wright and Visual novels as a genre?

Is a game “well written” if the story isn’t worth mentioning but the actual writing is pretty good?

Mostly, I’m thinking of all the vignettes in Driver: San Francisco. For a sandbox driving game, the writing offers a lot of laughs.

I actually really liked the story of that game, the way it fit what’s just a car-hopping, racing around game into a narrative about a dude in a coma trying to piece together a crime in his own subconscious.

I am going to cheat and pick PnP RPG’s.

Chaoism’s original Call of Chthulhu was amazingly well written.

It has now been surpassed by Stars Without Number. In my opinion the best written game so far. Why? Because it combines functionality with clear prose. No surprise it was written by a librarian who cares about words. But in terms of well written rules (rather than a well written story) Stars Without Number is tops for me.
free version here if you want to check it out.

ObThief 2: Thief 2

Both the in-game dialog and the mission prelude vignettes are very well done, though the overarching narrative is pretty basic. But the real pleasure is in all the minor touches. The verses the little Iron Beast sentries chatter to themselves, for example, are brilliant.

My list below. I took the question pretty literally, as regarding the words that are written–quality of narration or dialogue–less about the broader question of story construction or narrative design.

Thomas Was Alone - For its elegance and restraint

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers - For having real, distinct characters

Star Control II - For quirky characterization and an impressive mix of silliness and darkness

West of Loathing - For the strength and consistency of its humorous voice

Curse of Monkey Island - For technical joke construction

Fallen London - For inventiveness and consistency of voice

EDIT: Oh! Definitely Butterfly Soup, too! Apparently, I like funny writing. Or maybe it’s just that games with lots of serious writing usually do it poorly…

Runners up are Oxenfree, Edith Finch, Thief, Last Express

Grim Fandango & Last of Us are probably the best examples I can think of.

Others that are decent:

  • Uncharted
  • Tomb Raider reboot.

I’m waiting until replies get into the 200s and no one is paying attention so that I can try to sneak in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

I’m going to throw in The Mark Of Kri. Checkpoint writing where the narrative is delivered to you between sections, but it really stood out with the help of a great voice actor. I don’t believe many people have played it, so here is a quick scene that demonstrates it. This particular scene starts after finding your master killed by the baddies, and sets the stage for the final level.

Oh man I loved that game! I think that was the one the really sold me on stealth games.

This was my immediate thought, too. Honestly, though, I don’t know how well I remember those games, and I admit I’m not interested in replaying them. I do remember—as a teen—being enthralled by the writing in Bureaucracy.

Leather Goddesses was one of my favorite games.

UI’m trying really hard not to notice that @Gordon_Cameron left Planetfall off that list. Can’t imagine he meant to include it as “that sort of thing.”

System Shock 2 comes to mind. The ending sucked, but the story reveal with audio logs (before everyone and their brother copied this) was awesome.

I confess I missed a lot of infocom and was just a kid at the time.

Here’s a few I loved no one mentioned:

Age of Wonders
Gunpoint
Starcraft

I’ll double the Final Fantasy X @Rock8man had in his list. The whole summoner on a pilgrimage thing and reveals were fantastic. I bought the sequel way back just to continue the story. X-2 was a really strange experience going in blind.

I enjoyed a lot of the writing in Asheron’s Call (rip). I could ramble on for hours, but it was cool how the writers made a compelling story for the new world over 10+ years. I still remember having a tough time deciding Nuhmudira’s fate.

I went into the last expansion, Throne of Destiny, without looking at any of the spoiler websites. All the pre-release fiction was building up towards an invasion force from the last world and really fleshed out rebels you can help with quests. On the expansion’s release… the rebels were already gone. One of the starter quests was to enter the torture chambers and bring back the rebel leader’s heart to prove your loyalty. A rebel character I was looking forward to meeting ingame, Sir Bellas, was mysteriously missing as I went through the islands and missions.

It turns out he was the final boss of the expansion. A mind-eaten Viamontian Knight, whose only words were “Peace…” as he died. No hints as to what happened to him ingame, no one even talked about him. He was just an enemy with that name. He was the only knight with a name. Looks like I’m already rambling, but that was a boss battle I was really impacted by just because of the out of game writing. It was how they revealed the silent, monstrous 12 foot knights from another world you’ve been fighting all over the islands used to be the humans you went there to help.

No mention from Tom of Cultist Simulator?

And based on my short time with it so far, I’ll stick my neck out for Kingdom Come Deliverance

Top of the heap for me would probably be Planescape Torment, Portal 2 (which in my opinion is the most well produced game ever), Secret World, Witcher 3 (what I saw of it), and the online star wars thingy…the sorcerer voice acting was so good, it may have just been that.